Thai-Spiced Roasted Spaghetti Squash

This warm squash salad combines spicy, sweet, and sour elements in a fresh balance that enlivens traditional roasted turkey. If your squash is larger, simply increase the sauce elements to compensate. For a harvest-theme presentation, serve the spiced squash in one of the hollowed-out squash halves. View recipe.

Curried Winter Vegetable Gratin

Creamy goodness without any dairy (though you can substitute half-and-half for the coconut milk if you prefer). A great do-ahead side dish, this gratin combines parsnips’ sweet nuttiness with more traditional potatoes and carrots. Parsnips are an unsung hero of the winter pantry or root cellar; becoming sweeter after fall’s first frosts, they come into their own in dishes like this.View recipe.

Sautéed Winter Kale with Roasted Onions, Raisins, and Chile Flakes

“One of the healthiest of all ingredients, kale takes on a delicious sweetness in the winter. That’s why we plant enough each fall to ensure a steady supply. Here, I’ve added spice and sweetness, which make it an irresistible side dish.”View recipe.

Chai-Spiced Pumpkin Custards

“At our farm we grow hundreds of miniature pumpkins, so I make this fun take on traditional pumpkin pie throughout the holiday season,” says chef-farmer Eric Skokan. If your pumpkins are slightly larger, this filling amount will make six; if smaller, you should have enough for eight. (Bake any excess filling in an oiled ramekin.) Sprinkle leftover topping over a dish of fruit and yogurt. View recipe.

Eric Skokan is not your typical farm-to-table chef. He racked up credentials from high-end gigs in D.C. and San Francisco before opening the elegant Black Cat bistro and accompanying Black Cat Organic Farm farm in Boulder, Colorado, in 2006. “I thought I knew everything there is to know about food. Honestly, I was getting a little jaded,” he says. But a growing desire to connect with food and community from the ground up led him to purchase 21 farmland acres, learn how to raise animals, build a root cellar. Now he and his wife, Jill, farm full-time in addition to raising four kids and, incredibly, running their successful restaurant and recently launching the Bramble & Hare, a farmhouse kitchen and pub next door to Black Cat.

“Now, as a farmer, food is totally new again, every day,” Skokan enthuses. He plays with seasonings, experiments with unusual vegetables and breeds, and even reinvents the most venerable food holiday of all, Thanksgiving, with world-cuisine flavors and ingredients like chipotle, ginger, cilantro, coconut, and red pepper flakes. Sometimes a new approach to life—and cooking—just takes a little spice.